


Connecting the Dots

by bigblueboxat221b



Series: Speaking in Tongues [19]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Codes & Ciphers, M/M, Oblivious John, Sherlock Holmes is Bad at Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 11:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9892886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigblueboxat221b/pseuds/bigblueboxat221b
Summary: Easter eggs, Lego, yellow spray paint, and soap. What is Sherlock trying to say?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic goes out to Hetty, who offered me this prompt. Thank you!

John came in to breakfast, having slept later than Sherlock for once. He was a little put out that Sherlock had risen without him – they had no plans for the day, and he was hoping for at least a cuddle and a snog to get the day started. Seeing the state of the kitchen, he stopped, blinking at the scene.

“So, Easter eggs are in the shops, then?” John asked unnecessarily.

Sherlock grunted.

With a sigh, John accepted that Sherlock was on a case, or in the midst of some experiment that had clearly occurred to him in the middle of the night, hence the dozens and dozens of Easter eggs currently strewn around the kitchen. They were set out carefully on the table, and John grabbed one.

Before he could manage to unwrap it, Sherlock snatched it back, glaring at his audacity.

“What’s all this for?” John asked, filching an egg from a packet and flicking on the kettle.

“Experiment,” Sherlock replied, shifting the eggs around.

They seemed to form a pattern, John registered vaguely, though his attention was mainly on whether any of the mugs he could find were fit to make their tea in. Once he’d found a couple of clean mugs, he stood against the bench, watching Sherlock fiddle with the eggs. His face was scrunched up in concentration. John loved that face. It was probably because when he had that expression, he was too absorbed in his work to object to John’s scrutiny. Generally Sherlock hated when John examined his face, complaining that his cheekbones were too sharp and his eyes too weird a colour, his lips too accentuated to be considered attractive.

“You’re attractive to me,” John had pointed out, but Sherlock had brushed off the compliment. So John cherished these little moments, when his eyes could move freely over Sherlock’s face.

“What do you think?” Sherlock asked, pulling John out of his contemplation and back to the kitchen.

“Lovely,” he replied, barely glancing at the table. He was talking more about Sherlock than the eggs, anyway.

“You think so?” Sherlock asked, which was a little odd.

John just put down his mug and wrapped his arms around Sherlock. “Of course,” he replied, turning Sherlock around and finally instigating that snog he’d been hoping for. After a few minutes of leaning against the table, their increasingly frantic kissing lead to the inevitable disruption of Sherlock’s pattern. Neither of them noticed.

+++

“Lego, Sherlock?” John asked, dropping his bag on the chair. Sherlock was concentrating, so John picked up an Easter egg and sat down. The egg experiment hadn’t lasted long, and there were still dozens lying around the flat. Sherlock had sworn they were okay to eat, and John had found himself reaching for them now out of habit.

Absently, John picked up some Lego pieces, fitting them together with a satisfying ‘click’. Again, Sherlock had his concentrating face on, the wide base of his creation bearing dozens of tiny dots. To John they just looked strewn there by accident, but the care with which Sherlock was placing them made it clear there was a pattern. Upside down and without reference John had no idea, besides, he could see Sherlock from a whole different angle when they were sitting down, and he was more interested in that than some pattern in the Lego.

“Stop it, John,” Sherlock said.

John started. “Pardon?” he said in surprise. Had Sherlock caught him staring?

“You’re staring, John.” He waved his hand at the Lego. “Make something, or see if you can copy my pattern, or something.”

John glanced at the pattern, the vague flare of interest overtaken when Sherlock’s long fingers moved into his field of view, delicately shifting one tiny piece. Impulsively, John picked up the hand and drew the long middle finger into his mouth.

Sherlock looked impatient, but as John’s warm mouth encircled his finger, tongue swirling across the fingerprint, his breath caught. Their eyes met across the table, John’s eyebrow rising infinitesimally in an invitation.

Abruptly, Sherlock stood, roughly shoving the table aside as he reached for John.

The Lego board skidded under the fridge. Neither of them noticed.

+++

John stirred lazily, the weak London light stumbling in the window valiantly fighting against the darkness. It had probably snowed, he thought. Stretching, his eyes opened more fully, and he froze mid-stretch. Blinking hard, John stared at their ceiling. Sherlock had certainly been busy, he thought wryly. And he’d found the rest of the yellow spray paint. The whole of their ceiling was covered in rows and rows of bright yellow dots. John knew Sherlock was tall, and their ceilings were not particularly high, but it was clear Sherlock had to stand on the bed to reach, and there was no way he would have slept through that.

“Sherlock, if you’ve drugged me again without my permission…” John muttered, stalking into the bathroom and turning on the shower with more force than strictly necessary.

The switch for the fan was broken again, souring his mood even further, and he stood in the hot shower, eyes closed, willing the poor mood away. A snow day most likely meant a lazy day in with Sherlock, and he wasn’t going to waste that on being miffed about something as trivial as minor non-consensual drug administration.

John opened his eyes, the water running into them, then frowned. Had someone been writing on the mirror? He turned off the shower, stepping out to see better. Sure enough, someone (who was he kidding? _Sherlock_ ) had used what looked like soap to draw a series of dots on the mirror. The steam that clung to the mirror had not adhered to the soap, making the dots stand out, clear against the opaque glass. John stared at them, wondering what on earth had gotten into Sherlock lately. Looking at the dots, his brain was trying to make sense of them, sort them into a pattern. They looked familiar. Was this the same sequence as in the bedroom?

John wrapped a towel around himself then returned to the bedroom, flopping down on the bed and really looking at the mess on the ceiling. It was the same, a pattern of dots repeated. He stayed there for several minutes, trying to figure out what it could mean. Finally, the cold air chilling him, John dried and dressed himself, before heading out for a cup of tea. He tried to open the fridge, but something was stuck, preventing the door from opening. John reached down to the floor and tugged, the discarded Lego board coming away in his hand.

John stopped, crouched on the floor, holding the plastic board. Some of the dots had fallen off, but it was the same pattern. He took it into the bedroom to check.

“Sherlock!” he called, suddenly sure this was important, but with no idea why.

“Sherlock?” John called, though their flat was small enough that he would have heard John the first time. So he was out, when he knew for certain John would see at least the spots on the ceiling, if not the rest. From experience, John knew it meant Sherlock was nervous, and that whatever it was, it was important. Despite his abrasive personality, Sherlock was quite reluctant to engage in any confrontation about personal matters, often simply leaving rather than have an uncomfortable conversation.

So. This was important, probably a coded message for John that he had not noticed until it had been thrust in his face. John made his tea, then sat down with the Lego and copied out the message, just once without the repeats.

There seemed to be three lines of dots, repeating a short message. John sat down with his computer, the message and a pad of paper and got to work. With the help of the internet, he tried all the codes he could find that might be used to produce this sequence, though none came even close to making an intelligible message.

After two hours, his frustration got the better of him, and he swept the Lego onto the floor, scattering the pieces against the cupboard. Sighing, John crouched down, his anger gone.

Picking up one of the pieces, he looked at it, his mind still on codes that used dots. He stared at the rectangular brick, a standard Lego piece – two dots by three. His mind was processing fast. The code he was working on was three rows. There were an even number of dots across – what if it wasn’t three rows of dots, but groups of dots, rectangles two across and three down, six dots that worked together as a single unit? He used his pencil to divide the code into units.

12 letters.

John’s heart was beating faster as he sat again at his computer. He knew this was right, it was like Sherlock to choose something difficult, but leave the clues – the Lego pieces – for John to find. And if the message was something personal, something new and untested, Sherlock would leave the clues then disappear, just in case.

Swallowing hard, John cleared the search bar in Google and carefully typed ‘Braille alphabet’, then hit enter.

Millions of hits, of course, but John chose the first to appear, a simple letters-to-dots alphabet.

The first letter was a right angled triangle – J.

A left to right zig zag – O.

Another triangle, mirror imaged of the first – H.

Four dots without a shape – N. J-O-H-N.

 _John_. His name. He had cracked the code, but what of the rest of the message?

Heart beating faster, John decoded the rest, the letters printed carefully underneath the code he had copied off the wall. When he was done, John stared at it, hardly believing what he was seeing. His heart swelled with the words neither had drawn courage to speak, though it was present in every moment they spent together.

“Oh, Sherlock,” he said out loud.

“Yes?” Sherlock spoke from the doorway. His tone was clearly aiming for nonchalance, but John heard the waver that betrayed his nerves. He could see what John was doing, and the question in his eye was almost painful to witness.

John rose, speaking as he walked closer. “Bathroom mirror, huh?” he asked, smiling.

Sherlock nodded.

“The bedroom ceiling must have been difficult.”

He blushed at this, and John privately decided to let the non-consensual drug administration slide this one time.

“And the Lego. That was what gave it away.”

Sherlock nodded, uncertainty still in his eyes. “The Easter Eggs, too," he added.

Understanding flooded into John’s eyes. “Oh, that’s what that was about. I didn’t even look at the eggs.”

“I know,” Sherlock replied. “That’s why I had to paint the ceiling. Subtlety is not usually my forte.”

John’s smiled softened, changing into the special private look he kept only for Sherlock. He moved closer, wrapping his arms around the tall detective. John smiled up at him. “Sherlock?” he asked softly, his voice thrumming with emotion.

Sherlock swallowed hard, then whispered, “Yes, John?”

“I love you, too.”


End file.
